Worship
for the Lord’s Day
August
9, 2020
A Note before we begin
this day’s worship:
We will continue to worship from home until further notice.
However, we’ve added video of our normal
PowerPoint for the hymns with Bob Morris playing the organ at Bethesda and a
video of the sermon for your worship experience.
Some additional announcements:
Our VBS program; Creation – God’s Great Big
Beautiful World ran through its last Wednesday on Aug. 5. It was well received and the kids
particularly loved the Photo Scavenger Hunt challenge. All together we had twelve kids participate, but only five participating throughout the whole VBS program.
Our Sessions met via Zoom on Aug 6 and we discussed a number of options for beginning corporate worship again in the fall. We are continuing to monitor cases and hospitalizations for our area as well as how things go with schools back in session beginning at the end of this month. We will update you continually as the weeks develop.
Be patient. We will be together again, soon! Until then, let’s begin:
Opening Prayer
God of mysterious ways, You take our fears and turn them into triumphs. In these days especially, You remind us that You are always with us and that we do not need to fear the wind and waves of life. Encourage us to put our trust in You; to wade confidently through our difficulties to Your redeeming and transforming love. Give us courage and strength, joy and peace for all the times ahead. AMEN.
Hymn Seek Ye First
Prayer of Confession
Lord, please forgive our weakness and our lack of trust in You. We are like the disciples who, in the midst of fears and storms, could only tremble and wonder about the threatening events. Even when Jesus called to the disciples, they shook with fear. But Jesus offered words of encouragement. Impulsive Peter asked Jesus to call to him and bid him come out of the boat. Jesus complied and Peter stepped over the edge onto the waves — but fear claimed him again and he began to sink. Many of us can identify with that moment when we let go of our faith and clutch onto our fears. Help us to place our trust totally in You and Your call to us. You will guide and lift us to safety — that is the promise you have given to us and we believe it. When our faith slips, scoop us up and bring us peace. Be patient with us, for we are flawed and yet loved by You. Give us strong hearts and willing spirits to be your disciples. AMEN.
Words of Assurance
Keep your focus on Jesus. He is Your Savior and Your Guide. He will never fail you. Rejoice, dear friends, you are called precious by our Lord. AMEN.
Affirmation of Faith –
The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer I have not been posting individual prayer concerns on here as this is a public post, but continue to pray for all those affecting by Covid-19 - as the months pass, we'll all know more and more people personally battling the virus or who have died from it. Also please pray for our school administrators, teachers, students, families who are all making difficult (if not impossible decisions). Also pray for medical staff in hospitals and at doctor offices who are treating those who are infected. Pray for public servants and all those who must deal with the public everyday, putting themselves at risk. This morning I encourage you to pray your own prayers in silence, keeping all these in mind, as you pray. When you have finished, continue with the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer below.
For we ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior who taught us to pray saying; Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an
alien, the land of Canaan. 2This is
the story of the family of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was
shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah
and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to
their father. 3Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children,
because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with
sleeves. 4But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than
all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
12Now his brothers went to
pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13And
Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem?
Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” 14So he
said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock;
and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron. He came
to Shechem, 15and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him,
“What are you seeking?” 16“I am
seeking my brothers,” he said; “tell me, please, where they are pasturing the
flock.” 17The man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let
us go to Dothan.’“ So Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at
Dothan. 18They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them,
they conspired to kill him. 19They
said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20Come
now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that
a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his
dreams.” 21But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands,
saying, “Let us not take his life.” 22Reuben
said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness,
but lay no hand on him” —that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore
him to his father.
23So when Joseph came to his
brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he
wore; 24and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty;
there was no water in it. 25Then
they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming
from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to
carry it down to Egypt. 26Then
Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal
his blood? 27Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands
on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. 28When
some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the
pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took
Joseph to Egypt.
New Testament: Matthew 14:22-33
22Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. 25And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. 26But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. 27But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” 28Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. 30But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Anthem – Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus by Alan Jackson
Sermon – Just a note: You can click on the sermon title and hear/watch me give this sermon via YouTube from my home office.
(based on Matthew 14:22-33)
Today’s
story only appears in Matthew, none of the other gospel writers include
it. Mark includes the story about Jesus
coming across the sea and calming the storm, John uses a shortened version of
it and Luke leaves it out entirely. The
three Gospel writers who do tell the story agree that it followed the feeding
of the multitude and that Jesus’ calming the storm was a miracle worked only
for the disciples – which was a rather unusual occurrence because Jesus normally
did miracles with other people around – often with many other people as
witnesses. But this one was just for
them.
Let’s talk about the setting for a
moment. We often miss this part. Some of us may still have a fear of the
ocean, but for the most part we are familiar with the creatures of the deep and
have no fear of going to the beach and wading out, at least a little ways. However, back in Biblical times, the sea was
the abode of demonic forces, creatures of massive proportions and of the leviathan. It was the one place on earth that still held
the ancient idea of chaos that pervaded the beginning of creation. For the people of the New Testament, chaos
still reigned in the depths of the sea.
And as much as people of Jesus’ day loved their fish, because of that
unearthly realm, fishermen were often viewed as people who could not be
trusted; suspicious characters. Which, I
suppose, makes it that much more interesting that Jesus chose so many fishermen
to be part of his inner circle of twelve.
Only Matthew mentions Peter, which may
be why his version of the story is the most popular one. There is, after all, something so appealing
about Peter: the brash, passionate disciple who is always rushing into things,
saying what the others are only thinking, and doing what the others wouldn’t
dare. Peter is one of Jesus’ first
disciples, and clearly one of his favorites.
It is Peter who asks Jesus to explain
his parables, even though the explanation still confounds him sometimes. It is Peter who answers Jesus’ questions
first, even if he doesn’t fully understand his own answer. It is Peter who understands Jesus’ true
identity, but it is also Peter who fails to understand what it will cost him. It is Peter whom Jesus calls the rock upon
which he will build his church, one single moment before Jesus also calls him
Satan. It is Peter who swears he will
never deny Jesus, and Peter who does just that.
It is Peter whom Jesus asks to pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemane
on the night just before he was arrested and Peter who falls asleep.
In
today’s story, it is Peter whom Jesus calls to walk with him upon the water,
and Peter who sinks. Over and over and
over again, he is the disciple who takes risks, who makes great leaps of faith
and stumbles as often as not but who keeps brushing himself off and getting
right back up on that horse to try again.
He is the best of us and the worst of us all marbled together. But aren’t we all – saints and sinners at the
same time.
I guess, what we love and find
frustrating about Peter is that he is so achingly familiar. He is full of faith one minute and full of
doubt the next, who both loves Jesus and lets him down, who richly deserves
Jesus’ judgment but who also receives complete grace.
Weary after the feeding of the five
thousand, Jesus has sent his disciples on ahead of him and has gone by himself
into the mountains to pray. By
nightfall, he is still at it, while out on the sea his disciples have their
hands full, trying to steer their little boat right into a high wind and even
higher waves.
They are all, presumably, soaked,
their teeth chattering and their hands blistered from their efforts, when Jesus
comes to them. It is around three
o’clock in the morning, Matthew says. No
one can sleep, even if he wants to. They
are all watching the horizon, looking for land, measuring the distance they
have come against the distance they still have to go when someone spots a
shadowy figure walking towards them.
Now, remember what I said earlier about the setting of this miracle and
about how the ancients viewed the sea.
“It’s a ghost!” someone cries, but
immediately the ghost speaks to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no
fear.” His voice must sound so strange
to them, or perhaps he is still too far away to see, because Peter doesn’t
trust him. Scared to death, putting into
words what the others hardly dare think, Peter says, “Lord, if it is you, bid
me come to you on the water.”
Now that is a very strange thing to
say. Why not say, “Lord, if it is you,
make this storm stop right now”? But no,
Peter says, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” In essence I think Peter is saying: I’ve
spent my life on this sea and it still terrifies me. Take away my fear, my doubt. Make me have faith.
“Come,” Jesus says, so Peter swings
his legs over the side of the boat and he places his feet on the surface of the
water – the waves crashing against the side of the boat, the wind whipping
Peter’s hair into his eyes – he puts his feet flat on top of the water, takes a
huge, trembling breath, and stands. Then
he takes a few hesitant steps toward Jesus across the heaving surface, like the
first steps he ever took in his life. He
is doing fine, a look of surprise must have crossed his face and a deep burst
of pride must have surged within his heart until a gust of wind almost topples
him, and he gets scared, and feels his feet sinking into that black abyss
below, and he starts to go down like the very rock Jesus told him he would be.
Even if you have never tried to walk
on water, I bet you know exactly how he felt.
You were doing something out of character for you. Something a little scary and at first it all
seemed to be going okay, but then suddenly fear and doubt arose and you felt
yourself crashing. Maybe you were
crossing a stream on a fallen log, inching your way across its rough, rounded
surface, doing just fine until you looked down at the rushing water below you
and got scared, and lost your balance, and had to drag yourself the rest of the
way skootching across on your butt.
Maybe you were learning to ride a
bicycle, and had gained enough speed so that suddenly you stopped wobbling and
started really going, the wind in your hair, the scenery whipping by, when just
as suddenly you lost your confidence, dropped one foot on the ground, and
brought the whole experiment crashing down on top of you.
Or maybe you were addressing a crowd
of people, standing up in front of them to say something you believed in, and
at first the words just flowed from your mouth, exactly the words you needed at
exactly the moment you needed them, and then you looked at all those faces
looking back at you, and you lost your nerve, and your brain turned to mush,
and you sat down as quickly as you could, your cheeks burning, your hands
sweating, your knees shaking, and your heart pounding so loudly you could feel
it in your ears.
I think we all know that moment of
panic that Peter felt. “Lord, save
me!” Peter cries out, and Jesus does,
reaching out his hand and catching him, hauling him out of the cold water like
a big, frightened fish and dragging him over to where the other disciples can
pull him back into the boat. And then
the awful words out of Christ’s mouth, “O you of little faith, why did you
doubt?”
But they are the same words many of us
ask ourselves every day. Why don’t I
have more faith? Why can’t I trust
God? Why am I afraid to let go and let
God care for me? What do I fear? Why do I doubt? We believe we are in God’s hands and that
they are good hands, but then some catastrophe hits and we lose something; a
loved one, a home, a business and as time goes on and no easy answer comes our
faith goes to and we begin to sink.
In her book, Help Thanks Wow, Three
Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott writes about how essential, honest, sincere and
downright necessary the prayer of “Help” is to our lives. She writes, “So when we cry out Help, or
whisper it into our chests, we enter the paradox of not going limp and not
feeling so hopeless that we can barely walk, and we release ourselves from the
absolute craziness of trying to be our own – or other people’s – higher powers.
“Praying
‘Help’ means that we ask that Something give us the courage to stop in our
tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of
our problems. We stop the toxic peering
and instead turn our eyes to something else: to our feet on the sidewalk, to
the middle distance, to the hills, whence our help comes – someplace else, anything
else. Maybe this is a shift of only
eight degrees, but it can be a miracle.
It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you
think it means you have lost. But in
surrender you have won.”
That’s exactly what Peter did, he
moved his eyes away from his fear towards the One who could save him. It was only a matter of degrees, from eyes
down at the fear, to eyes up at his Savior, crying, “Help, Lord, save me.” And Jesus took him by the hand and pulled him
back into the boat.
I
believe that God is present and active in the world, but terrible things do
happen. We can believe in life after
death and a bright future with God, but then our husband or wife gets sick or
we hear the news of cancer and the doctor says six months, maybe more. And we pray for a miracle but no miracle
comes, and we pray for the reassuring voice of God but no voice comes, and the
waves creep up our legs, and we begin to sink.
Why do we doubt? Because there is very good reason to doubt,
we’re afraid, because the sea is so vast and we are so small, because the storm
is so powerful and we are so easily sunk, because life is so beyond our control
and we are so helpless in its grip. Why
do we doubt? Because we’re afraid, even
when we do have faith and we DO have faith.
Like Peter, we have a little, and a little is better than none, even
though there are times when it doesn’t seem enough to save us.
But that little prayer “Help” is all
we need.
Our
fears and doubts may paralyze us, but they are also what make us cry out for
God’s saving touch. When we sink, as
Peter does, as we all do, our Lord reaches out and catches us, returns us to
the boat, where our companions grab us by the scruff of the our necks and haul
us aboard, where we land embraced by familiar and loving arms and we fall
grateful and exhausted onto the slippery deck.
All at once the wind ceases, and the waves hush, and in that awesome
silence of night becoming day, all of us who are in this boat together can
worship him, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God.” And we grab hands and arms together and we
hold on.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Hymn Abide With Me
Benediction
You have been embraced by the love of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and blessed by Jesus to go into this world to offer healing and hope. Go in peace. AMEN.
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